Jonathan S. Tobin
The Michigan Senate race tells us more about the future of the Democrats and the centrality of antisemitism in our public discourse than the demise of the disgraced Graham Platner in Maine.
Michigan Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed speaks with the news media after campaigning with New York Democrat candidate for Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a rally on the campus of Wayne State University in Detroit, July 28, 2018. Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images.
This last week, the political world has been focused on events in Maine as the campaign of the Nazi-tattooed Graham Platner crashed and burned in the wake of new sexual-assault allegations. But his exit from the midterms doesn’t eliminate the most dangerous Democrat currently running for the U.S. Senate. Indeed, lost amid the understandable focus on Platner’s disgraceful conduct and churlish withdrawal was the continued rise of another left-wing Democratic Senate hopeful, Abdul El-Sayed, the current favorite to win his party’s nomination for a Michigan Senate seat.
Indeed, El-Sayed’s performance in a debate against his last remaining opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), deserved a lot more attention than it got. He didn’t just pummel his opponent as a creature of the party establishment but depicted her campaign as solely a manifestation of a Jewish plot to buy American elections for the sake of Israel.
As far as the Detroit public-health official is concerned, the main issue in 2026 isn’t the usual Democratic talking points about affordability, the economy or even their laundry list of complaints about President Donald Trump. It’s AIPAC, and he is seeking to make this primary matchup a referendum on its legitimacy and that of the entire pro-Israel community.
Crossing a line
Although he claims that he is opposed to antisemitism, his obsessive focus on the pro-Israel lobby isn’t really rooted in a concern about campaign finance laws. It’s about labeling support for the Jewish state—expressed in the same manner that Americans do on every conceivable issue—as an evil foreign plot. Combined with his trafficking in blood libels about Israel committing “genocide” in Gaza and his opposition to the existence of the one Jewish state on the planet, the El-Sayed campaign has crossed a line that few, if any, mainstream major party Senate candidacies have even approached in living memory.
As he reaches the home stretch of a bitter primary battle, he has now dropped any pretense that what he is doing is anything other than a war on the Jewish presence in the American public square. And if the polls are accurate, he’s likely to be the Democratic nominee in a race that will garner the lion’s share of the attention this fall. If he goes on to defeat the Republican nominee, former Rep. Mike Rogers, then he will be more than a prominent member of a Senate version of the far-left “Squad.” He’ll be using the U.S. Senate as a platform to mainstream the demonization of Israel and Jews.
Up until now, El-Sayed was largely in the shadow of Platner in terms of national media coverage. Platner’s ability not only to garner attention, but to generate a wave of support, from liberals around the country who seemed to think that a former Marine and Oyster fisherman (albeit from an upper-class background) with a Nazi-symbol tattooed on his chest and a checkered past filled with abusive relationships and comments was the Democrats’ perfect answer to Trump and the Republicans.
Though more of a Washington insider’s idea of a working-class American than a real one, he attracted a following around a nation willing to rationalize and excuse everything he had done or said, no matter how outrageous. That Platner combined edgy faux outsider appeal with Israel-bashing made him the ideal standard-bearer for progressives in 2026 and helped him win the Democratic primary in Maine. Democratic stalwarts were ready to stand by him, despite the obvious evidence of not only antisemitism but also violent misanthropy (they dismissed allegations of sexual violence until a victim who was a liberal activist came forward), says a lot about their cynicism, insincerity and tolerance for Jew-hatred.
The son of Egyptian immigrants, El-Sayed is more polished, with none of Platner’s personal baggage. Yet he is even more ideologically committed to the war on the Jewish state. What’s more, his rise in the polls to his current position over Stevens speaks volumes not only about what appeals to Michigan Democrats, but to the rapid sea change in the party around the country.
An obsession with AIPAC
It isn’t exaggerating to say that, like Platner was doing before the Democratic establishment embraced him, El-Sayed has been running against his own party as much as Trump and the GOP. He has attacked Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) as often as the president. Using rhetoric that was even more pointed than the antisemitic smears uttered by House “Squad” members, Reps. Ilan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), he has denounced Schumer as part of an establishment that has sold America to Israel and AIPAC.
That may be ironic, given the fact that the New Yorker has largely betrayed his pledges about being the shomer, or “guardian” of Israel and the Jews in the Senate. But El-Sayed’s war on Jews who speak up for their community doesn’t spare those who merely pay lip service to support for Israel against its genocidal foes.
This has led to awkward moments for him, such as his attempt to rationalize the actions of the Muslim terrorist who attempted to slaughter Jewish children in a failed attack in mid-March on a synagogue in West Bloomfield, Mich. By blaming the crime on Israel’s war against Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, El-Sayed seemingly stumbled. But rather than hurting his candidacy, his willingness to brazenly justify domestic terrorism solidified his hold on the Democratic base beyond the Arab-American strongholds in cities like Dearborn.
Indeed, the debate about the post-Oct. 7 surge of antisemitism across the globe has materially aided his candidacy.
McMorrow’s principled blunder
Throughout the previous six months, the Michigan Democratic Senate race was a three-way battle, with State Sen. Mallory McMorrow neck and neck with El Sayed and Stevens. McMorrow burst upon the scene in 2022 with a viral video attacking Republicans for their opposition to the imposition of gender ideology in schools. That, along with the same sort of Israel-bashing that became fashionable for Democrats, made her a liberal heroine. In the intervening years, her reputation grew (she had a prime-time speaking slot at the 2024 Democratic National Convention), and she was seen as the likely standard-bearer for the left against the more moderate Stevens in 2026.
But McMorrow’s campaign never recovered from what turned out to be a principled stand that was political poison for Democrats. When El-Sayed stumped with antisemitic podcast host Hasan Piker, McMorrow denounced him for legitimizing “a provocateur, to put it lightly, who says things that are misogynistic and antisemitic, and said that the United States deserved 9/11.”
In doing so, she likely thought she could help marginalize El-Sayed and turn the primary into a two-woman race between herself and Stevens. In an earlier era of American politics, that might have been the result. But in 2026, in a Democratic Primary where Jew-hatred is no longer beyond the pale, it had the opposite effect. Rather than strip El-Sayed of support, her own support from the liberal base she had counted on began to evaporate. In the eyes of Michigan progressives, she had betrayed them by denouncing the way El-Sayed and Piker trafficked in antisemitism. By the time she finally withdrew from the race in late June, her support had dwindled to the point where her exit was largely meaningless.
El-Sayed says that as a religious Muslim, he’s not a socialist. But his campaign has highlighted much of the same Democratic Socialist economic agenda and its hostility to immigration law enforcement that propelled Zohran Mamdani to victory in the New York City Mayor’s race in 2025, as well as other triumphs for leftist candidates in New York and Colorado. But in the July 6 debate and throughout the campaign, his primary focus has been to label anyone who isn’t ready to falsely accuse Israel of “genocide” or to foreswear support from AIPAC as beyond the pale.
A moderate falters
In the face of this assault, Stevens has clearly faltered. A genuine moderate who has benefited from pro-Israel support throughout her career, she has struggled to distance herself from the Jewish state during the campaign in a vain effort to stay within her party’s mainstream. She even garnered some pushback from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, when asked on CNN to respond to Steven’s criticism that he had “put Jews in an uncomfortable position across the country,” said her remarks showed that she “can’t stand up for the truth” and accused her of trying to excuse antisemitism.
That exchange illustrated the impossible position the dwindling band of at least nominally pro-Israel Democrats now find themselves in. Like Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who was recently defeated in a primary because of his unwillingness to denounce Israel, the attempt to chart a middle course between promoting blood libels about “genocide” and unabashed support for the Jewish state is a fool’s errand. It has exposed the way their party’s voters now view anything other than open hostility to Zionism as unacceptable.
El-Sayed’s constant invocation of AIPAC is fundamentally dishonest. The pro-Israel group is merely one among many Washington advocacy organizations. It spends far less money lobbying and supporting candidates than many other groups representing more powerful constituencies like the oil, insurance, pharmaceutical and health-care industries. And leftist funds like the Soros family’s Open Society Foundations spend far more money on candidates and elections.
Like the lie about Israel committing “genocide” or “apartheid,” the attacks on AIPAC as a uniquely evil force undermining America are an expression of Jew-hatred. It’s merely shorthand for traditional antisemitic tropes about Jews and money. El-Sayed isn’t just an anti-Israel candidate; he’s someone who seeks to throw Jews out of the public square unless they bend their knees to leftist doctrines that label their people and the Jewish state as “white” oppressors.
Democrats need to hold the seat that Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) is vacating this year if they have any hope of flipping the Senate. To do so, that may involve their embracing a candidate who may wind up being the country’s most prominent antisemite by November. If they could hold their noses and back Platner up until a woman accusing him of rape came forward, they’ll have no trouble finding a way to stick with El-Sayed. That will demonstrate more than their cynicism. It will be confirmation that they are ready to embrace Jew-hatred in exchange for power.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily” program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.
Na zdjęciu: Irańska policja ściga protestujących przeciwko reżimowi i bije ich pałkami w Teheranie, 19 września 2022 r. (Zdjęcie: AFP via Getty Images)
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